(Closed) Am I reading too much into this? E Ring pop ups and sidebar ads on his computer

I don’t know a ton about computers or the internet, but I think that sometimes the ads that pop up or appear on your side bar are the result of targeted advertising. In other words, if you are spending a lot of time searching for and looking at “x” product online, ads for “x” product are more likely to appear. (Maybe I’m wrong on this one. Please someone correct me if I am wrong.) Anyway, last night I was on the couch while my bf was on facebook on his laptop. I noticed that almost all of the sidebar ads on his facebook account were for engagement rings. Could this mean that he has been looking at engagement rings online?! Or am I so desperate at this point that I have begun imagining things? LOL

If you guys have a wireless router and you have your own comptuer and have been looking at rings it could pop up just based on IP address. I get side bar apps for car parts that FI looks at all the time. He’s been known to get a wedding dress side bar app too when I was looking.

@floridabride12: No we live in different places. He has wireless and I have been too chicken to look at erings while I am at his condo. All of the searching for erings that I do is from the comfort of my own home which has a landline (and where I can look at all of my pretty ring porn in peace. lol). Still, maybe there is some cross over. I don’t know, I’m going to stop being a crazy girl now…

He must have been searching something. Ads for the place where we got my engagement ring follow me everywhere still 🙂 I think the FB ones might be related to your profile too? As soon as I changed my profile to engaged, my side ads became wedding related!

I know Facebook will tailor some ads to your information– when you change your relationship status or when they know you’ve been in a relationship for a long time, you’ll start getting engagement ring ads. When my friends got married they started getting baby ads even though they hadn’t been searching for baby items or trying to conceive.

I work in online advertising (I create and target those ads you’re seeing). If those ads are in FB, they have a pretty targeted way to advertise. Those ads are based off of your profile and information from there. I started getting engagement and wedding ads a few years into my In a Relationship status and after I put in our anniversary date.

If you’re seeing these ads in a normal browser or just random webpages it may be because he has been searching websites with that material. Google does a new thing called retargeting where the advertiser puts code on their page that when you visit the site gives you a cookie. Now, when you go to visit another website that hosts Google Ads an ad for that company that you previously visited will show up, whether its related content or not.

facebook definitely does this… if he searched it or if he ‘liked’ any ring stores or wedding related things the side bar will reflect that for quite a while lol. On my fb I like things and then remove them from my wall so nobody can see it (and you’d never be able to find it amoung my 1500 other likes hehehe)

I know I had searched my local jewelry store and I started getting ‘engagement photo sessions’ and ‘bridal stores’ on my side bar… FI saw them and thought I was dropping bombs of hints. Guess it worked out for me, though I was really just looking to return something HAHAHA.

@futuremrshc: Yeah but I doubt he has been on this site. Just the thought of my bf posting as a waiting bee makes me lol! (It would be nice for a change though).

@jenewitt: Yeah, neither of us has changed our status or written anything about engagement on our walls. So, if fbook only mines info from profiles and not from other sites that an individual looked at then maybe it is random

I don’t want to rain on your parade, but Facebook targeting is crazy. They just look for the general demographics. Let’s say your boyfriend is in his 20s and his relationship status is “in a relationship”. FB then assumes that he must be interested in proposing.

I’m in my 30’s and not yet married, so FB concludes that I must be a single mother (I don’t have any children) and many of my ads are about scholarships for working single moms. FB also randomly wants me to become a nurse (some FB friends are nurses) or a police officer (FI is one), a social worker (I studied Sociology), or buy alligator shaped silverware (I have no idea where that one is coming from!)